India arrests suspect in 1999 Kandahar hijacking
Mehrajuddin Dand, alias Javed was arrested by police in Kashmir's Kishtwar district on Thursday morning, ending a near 13-year-old pursuit of the accused behind the high-profile hijacking.
The New Delhi-bound Indian Airlines aircraft with 157 people on board was seized and flown to the southern Afghan city of Kandahar by five men after it took off from the Nepalese capital Kathmandu on December 24, 1999.
Kuldeep Singh Dhatwalia, a spokesman for the home ministry told AFP that Dand was arrested in the morning and that the "initial investigation reveals that he provided logistical support to the hijackers".
Media reports said that Dand had provided assistance and fake travel documents to the five hijackers, none of whom were apprehended by police after the incident.
Dhatwalia said Dand moved across the border between India and Pakistan for years until police nabbed him.
"He is being questioned in a number of other cases as well, but we cannot reveal those details yet," he said.
The 1999 hijack crisis ended after India's then government swapped three suspects imprisoned in New Delhi for the captives.
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In many respects, the high jacking incidence was the beginning of organized terrorism in the world today. Let the people not forget who the swapped prisoners were and what they did subsequently and also the young widow and her husband who became the innocent victims in this.
Good work.
I remember that Christmas Eve watching the drama unfold on television and being disgusted by the whole thing while screaming obscenities at the Afghan authorities for allowing this spectacle to take place in Kandahar, the land of my ancestors. Thank God those days are over and I pray that Afghanistan remains steadfast in their war against the Taliban.
Since 1999 they are after the ones who hurt them. And we, the Pakistanis, forget the morning's bomb blast in the evening.
"The 1999 hijack crisis ended after India’s then government swapped three suspects imprisoned in New Delhi for the captives."
This particular crisis may have ended. But, it gave birth to JeM, killing of Daniel Pearl, and many more incidences for Pakistan that has now grown up to the killing of Shias. Who knows where it will end? It was the first and only time that Afghanistan's name was associated with a plane hijacking incidence. Afghanis even today resent that Pakistan actually used Afghanistan territory as its strategic depth.
Good India should now respond like mossad against terrorists
Hang them!